


Music

by AssyEr



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Just small little things, Marius is a feral little shit, about how they first started playing music, but thats fine cause she was also a kid, no beta we die like men, oh and Raph stabs a kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssyEr/pseuds/AssyEr
Summary: The first time some of the mechs played music.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	Music

**Author's Note:**

> written for writers month, prompt being music.
> 
> yes i already fucked up yesterday with the thing, but i was tired, and i'll compensate it on weekend

The first time Raphaella la Cognizi played the piano had been on her grandmother’s house.

She had stabbed a kid in class that day. Well, not really, she hadn’t used a knife at least. Those were not allowed in her classroom yet, and probably never would now, much to her despair. The boy, Lorenzo, had told her that it was impossible to stab someone with a pen, that the point was too dull, and other dumb stuff. To which she responded that anything can be used to stab if you had enough force. He hadn’t believed her, so of course proof was necessary to solve the argument.

The teacher had been mad. The principal had also been mad. Raph knew that her parents would be even more if they called them to the office again that week. So she had invented some lie, that she was staying with gran, and prayed for her to follow the façade.

And she had. That’s was why gran was her favorite. She didn’t get angry when she stabbed kids and always played along with her lies. She loved her.

She had been sent home with a two days expulsion, and an angry red face on her green notebook. On her opinion, the face had been a little too much. Lorenzo was fine, the nurse said he wouldn’t need stitches, he had just cried a lot because he was a baby. Besides, she had been incited. He had practically asked for it.

All of it she told her gran, who smiled and laughed at her imitations of the bloody boy. Then she went back to being serious, and told her that they would have to tell her parents, sooner or later. They would wander why she couldn’t go to school for the next days, and had to sign the angry face.

But not right now, she told Raph. She could spent the rest of the morning on her house while they figured out what to do with the situation. Her gran needed the help, after all.

She had been cleaning the library room when she found it. It hadn’t been there before, well, she really hoped it hadn’t been, or it would talk very poorly of her scientific abilities.

It was a piano. Not like those she saw in the movies, big and black with people slowly dancing around them. It was smaller, long and slim and supported over a table that hadn’t been there before. A cable came out of it, plugging it to the wall. A green light said it was on.

She walked towards it and slammed her hands into the keys.

The sounds that came out of it weren’t music, but Raphaella saw the possibility. She started to touch them all once again, dragging her fingers from right to left, and the other way around.

“I see you’ve found the piano” her gran appeared from behind her.

She gently got her fingers out of the instrument, and played a short tune. Raph, mesmerized, tried to replicate her movements, but didn’t quite remember what she’d done. Her gran showed her again, and again, until she got it right. They spent the rest of the morning on it, until they had no option but reveal to her parents that she was not in school, and that she wouldn’t be for the next few days.

As predicted, they had been outraged, and worried, and told her that she would have to start going once again to the children psychologist, and then that they would look for a better one, after they were reminded that the old one had said that she was beyond her capabilities.

For the next days, and because she was grounded, Raphaella was to stay on her gran’s house, helping with the cleaning. She couldn’t have been happier.

Tim might or might not have learned to play the guitar because he had been told he looked like the kind of guy who had one.

He had been a teenager, all right. The idea had lingered on his mind for a while, until he decided that yeah, he could be that person. Why not. He got himself a job in a small shop, and once he saved enough he bought himself the instrument and downloaded some tutorials on his pad (illegibly, of course).

He… hadn’t been the best of players at the beginning. There was something inherently wrong in the way his fingers insisted on touching the strings, and it took him a lot of practice to differentiate an untoned guitar from a well-adjusted one.

But the person who told him that, they hadn’t been wrong. It suited his Vibe, he decided at 15. It also made Bertie smile and sing along him when he invited him to his house, insisting that Tim took out the instrument.

To be the person responsible for his laughs… yes, he could be that.

Drumbot Brian had no idea of how he learned to play the drums, tough he suspected that it had something to do with _her_.

In the first day on his stay on the Aurora (well, the first day he wasn’t chased to be killed on sight), Jonny had asked him if he knew how to play an instrument.

“I… I don’t know?”

Jonny had scoffed at him. “Well, choose one, you’ll have plenty of time to practice here,” he said, taking another drink of the bottle he had been holding.

Brian shock his head. That couldn’t be right, it felt wrong. “I… I mean, I think I do? I just don’t know. Which one.”

He had stared at him for a moment, taking in what he had just said. Then he had broken into a laughing strike, getting up from the chair.

“Of course. Of fucking course,” he had said while leaving, clearly drunk.

Next time they stopped in a planet they took Brian to a music shop, which means that Ashes dragged all the crew to a music shop. There, he saw a drum kit, and it was like something inside him clicked, now fit. He approached the instrument, and started playing a rhythm.

“Sounds good,” Ashes said.

The whole crew had to help him to carry the stolen drums into the ship, and then come back again for the rest of the instruments they had liked. He had helped them, of course, he had been in nice Brian, and then decided to spend the next of the week getting familiar with his new toy.

He didn’t do anything but sit there with a pair of sticks and play. It wasn’t as much of a big thing when you are immortal and literally made of metal, but he still got called a drumbot when after the fifth day he didn’t show any sign of stopping soon.

It wasn’t a bad thing to be called, he thought to himself, all things considered.

Drumbot Brian. It sounded like him. 

Whether the Toy Soldier knew how to play instruments or was just pretending to is still up to debate, as it doesn’t provide any other answer to the question but yes.

But the first time it ever played anything it had been attempted to be taught. Attempted, because the person trying to teach it had long since forgotten how instruments worked, and her explanations always boiled down to handing them music sheets and ordering it to play.

And so the Toy Soldier played, every song, every instrument it had been given. The first one had been a piano, but it hadn’t liked it much. The piano it had been given was a grand one, and it was in its opinion very impractical. It had enjoyed very much the mandolin. She had always preferred the violin, and so it had been the one it used the most.

It choose to pretend not hating it, and in secret pretended to love the mandolin. When it had parted from her house, it took it with itself.

By now that particularly mandolin had long since exploded, but it still conserved a small splinted from it. Well, it assumed it was from it. It could also be from itself, having been mixed with its own a thousands of times already.

He decided to pretend it was, just in case.

Marius’ name wasn’t his own, and neither was the violin on which he learned to play.

The small town he lived in was not big on population, but it had a spaceship port that a respectable amount of sellers and dealers used, of which the only respectable thing about them was their numbers. Or, to say it in other words, most of them were dealers and/or criminals.

They stopped there to sell, recharge fuel, and perhaps enjoy a night out, drinking until the highest hours of the night. There was a bar that was technically not a bar, but where this individuals gathered to play cards, tell stories and throw a knife or two at the most annoying idiot present.

Julian, as Marius had chosen to be called that night, had already gotten three, and only returned one. He was an eight years old prat who liked to get inside the tavern while no one was looking, tell lies and hear stories about what was out there.

In exchange for not telling his mothers, the owner would give him work to do, from keeping the fire alive in the chimney to clean barf after someone had a beer too many. He didn’t care, he loved it. One day, he had already decided, he was stealing a ship and getting out of the planet. He didn’t have an idea of what he would do after, but it was going to be fun.

There was a new guy, he noticed as soon as he stepped inside from the hole in the back wall (if someone saw him entering, the owner wouldn’t lift a finger to help, as he had already discovered). He first heard him talk, and he knew by his tone that he was a storyteller.

He got excited, as not many of those came to towns like his own. They mostly stay near the big cities, where they could get maybe a meal or a place to sleep in exchange for their performance, and he was sure the old man for who he kind of worked for wouldn’t give him a glass of water to one if they were on fire.

Charlie, as was his name, hadn’t yet saw him enter, and so he had sat in the floor near him, hearing attentively to his tales.

He was playing a violin while he narrated. It was an old thing, its wood scratched by years of traveling, but the music captivated ~~Marius~~ Julian all the same. From it there came sad tones, angry tones, even fun ones, as the story demanded.

But after a while he was noticed, and put to work. Still while cleaning the tables and serving orders (and missing some, hence the knives) he kept an ear open for the storyteller.

He was the last to go.

Once the bar was quiet and almost empty, he told the boy to approach. He did, after checking his hands for any weapon. They exchanged names, and Lock, as he had presented himself, asked if he had enjoyed his stories.

Red up to his ears upon realizing he had noticed his staring, Marius nodded, and added that he had really liked his music too. The man laughed, apparently captivated by the kid, and asked him if he would like to try.

Lock passed him his violin, _Bellessa_ , and taught him to get a few notes out of it. He showed him how to rest his chin correctly, and the angle to rise his arms to get the sweetest (or almost acceptable) melodies out of it. He congratulated him when he did it on his own, and laughed along when he managed to do it right. Even showed him to play a short song, five notes in repetitive order, clapping and smiling.

Marius loved it.

So, after returning the violin to the man and getting a pat on the head, he waited until his back was turned and stole the instrument, running as fast as his legs allowed, the angry shouts of the original owner ringing on his ears all the way to his room.

It couldn’t have been more obvious that it was Lock’s first time in a town like this, and probably the last if he kept with his naivety.

He practiced, and practiced, and by the time he got out of the planet to fight in war, he even had a couple of songs of his own under his belt.

**Author's Note:**

> me: realises i can just name the fic with the prompt  
> my brain: *surprised pikachu*
> 
> Thank you for reading! kudos and comments are more than appreciated, as they make me feel like that weird thing written on the wall of your classroom? it has always been there, and what it says might not be the funniest thing ever, but the dumbness of it makes you smile as you're a ball of nerves before a test. Like that.


End file.
